


Personal Responsibilities

by TS2



Series: Path to Redemption [4]
Category: Westworld (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:21:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26194795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TS2/pseuds/TS2
Summary: William, dressed as the Man in Black, and Lawrence discuss obligations on the way to Pariah.Spoilers: Westworld season 1-2
Series: Path to Redemption [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824142





	Personal Responsibilities

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in middle of season 2 episode 2, as William and Lawrence are on the way to Pariah.

(After rescuing Lawrence from the Pardue brothers and enlisting his help in his journey west, William, dressed in his standard black outfit, and Lawrence, dressed in his standard south-western scoundrel outfit, are riding towards the town of Pariah.)

LAWRENCE: “So what makes you think this guy you know in Pariah is going to help us?”

WILLIAM: “You could say I knew him in a past life. I know what makes him tick, what drives him. Just like I knew you would help me.”

LAWRENCE: “You make it sound like I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

WILLIAM: “On the contrary, Lawrence, I believe now you most certainly do. Nothing’s stopping you from telling me to go fuck myself and riding off back to that wife and daughter of yours. Might be the smart thing to do, really.”

LAWRENCE: “Don’t tempt me. And how do you know about them anyways?”

WILLIAM: “I know lots of secrets about this place. I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I didn’t. Spent so much time trying to figure out up from down in here, the two bleed into each other sometimes. Not exactly the state of mind that makes for a stable family life. Consider yourself lucky you still got yours.”

LAWRENCE: “Something happen to yours?”

WILLIAM: “…My wife couldn’t stand living with me anymore, so she left. Can’t say I blame her…just hope she didn’t feel guilty about the man she saw me become over the years. Whatever she saw broken in me was beyond her ability to fix.”

LAWRENCE: “What about your daughter?”

WILLIAM: “…I don’t remember telling you I had a daughter…not today anyways.”

LAWRENCE: “No? Must have been a lucky guess on my part.”

WILLIAM: “If Lady Luck exists in here, she’s one crooked bitch. You remember my daughter’s name?”

LAWRENCE: “...can’t say that I do.”

WILLIAM: “Of course not, that would be too easy. It has to be left open to interpretation…problem is with the person doing the interpreting, seeing what he wants to see as opposed to what’s actually there. Like trying to decode the intent of the creator of this place, with its games and mazes. Did he hope we’d reach the end, or did he want us to get lost, chasing our tails, proving our fallibility…or did he just enjoy the sight of us running around like rats, not caring either way?”

LAWRENCE: “You sound like a man angry at his maker.”

WILLIAM: “Not MY maker…more an adversary. I’m getting the feeling the fucker saw himself as my nemesis, and this is his last shot at getting vengeance. He thought he deserved to be my judge, jury, and executioner…the pompous prick, there’s others more deserving of those roles.”

LAWRENCE: “These other’s, we going to be crossing paths with them?”

WILLIAM: “Some aren’t anywhere near this place…but there’s another old friend here. She was remembering things, too…choices she made I’d decided were impossible a long time ago. At the time, her recalling that stuff seemed an attempt to distract me more than anything, maybe some kind of glitch, but now…if she can remember, and make her own choices in here…reminds me of an old saying: ‘You can be fooled by believing lies, and you can be fooled by not believing the truth.’ Question is whether I could pull her out of whatever she's in before she put a bullet in my head.”

LAWRENCE: “You think it’s a good idea meeting up with folks you have to convince not to kill you?”

WILLIAM: “If you’re looking to find out who you really are, who you could have been, and they have answers… yeah, maybe it is.”

LAWRENCE: “If we come across her, let me know so I’m not standing next to you during your reunion. Why she want to kill you anyways?”

WILLIAM: “…Because she’s a walking, talking puppet, her mind made up of a combination of zero’s and ones, with programmed reflexes fine-tuned by a psychopath? Or is she something else, someone who can suffer, ask herself why someone would do something so hateful, ask what she’d done to deserve the pain, question what kind of world would tolerate this. And then remember that suffering, have to make choices on how to live in that world the next day, and the day after that…choose who they wanted to become, what to shape the world into. What would you do if someone made you suffer, Lawrence?”

LAWRENCE: “I’d make them suffer right back, twice as much so they’d remember not to fuck with me in the first place.”

WILLIAM: “You wouldn’t wonder why they did it in the first place? If there was something you could change to prevent it from happening?”

LAWRENCE: “Maybe if I thought there was a point to wondering why…but maybe there isn’t. Some people just want to make others suffer for their own reasons, and that’s their problem. My problem is making sure they stay away from me and mine.”

WILLIAM: “You make it sound so simple.”

LAWRENCE: “Sometimes life can be as simple or as hard as you want to make it.”

WILLIAM: “Yeah, and sometimes you can’t live your life based on platitudes. There are some devious people out there, looking to use you in ways you never thought possible. Could be you made someone suffer, Lawrence, without even knowing it.”

LAWRENCE: “If you can’t control the cards you’re dealt, all you can do is play your hand as best you can. I ain’t responsible for things beyond my control, things I ain’t aware of.”

WILLIAM: “What if someone came calling one day, holding you responsible for harm to them and theirs, and looking to collect on that debt, even if you thought you weren’t responsible for paying it back?”

LAWRENCE: “I’d do what I always do and try and talk my way out of it. Of course, like with what happened with the Pardue brothers, doesn’t always work.”

WILLIAM: “Yeah, you could bullshit your way out of being held to account. But are you guilty, or not?”

LAWRENCE: “Depends…I’m not even sure what we’re really talking about here. What would I be guilty of, some guy thinks I owe him, but I think I don’t? That’s easy, not guilty, then.”

WILLIAM: “What if you find out later that maybe you did owe them. You didn’t know it at the time, but you took something from them, something important you didn’t even know was theirs…and you did them harm by taking it.”

LAWRENCE: “If I didn’t know, why the hell should I feel like I owe them? Like I said, I ain’t responsible for things I ain’t aware of.”

WILLIAM: “Like shooting at a paper target nailed to the outside of a barn…only to find out later someone was standing inside the barn behind the target.”

LAWRENCE: “Well, that might be a different story, big stretch from stealing some horses to taking someone’s life. Like you said, a person might be inclined to ask some questions, wonder why it happened, who’s to blame. Sometimes suffering blinds people to how things are, warps how they see things. On the whole, I’d say I’ve tried to take things only from those who could afford to lose them. But if I knew I was taking something from someone who would take it personally, feel the loss, I’d try and make sure who was to blame was left an open question, so as to avoid any attempt at either repossession or retribution.”

WILLIAM: “…I’ll do you one better. Convince your enemy to steal from his friends and loved ones. And then one day, when he’s looking for some way to square things with all of them, let his victims know exactly what he’s taken from them.”

LAWRENCE: “Kinda fucked up, would have to be someone you really hated. But doesn’t really make sense, how would you convince your enemy to steal from the people he cared about?”

WILLIAM: “Make him believe that you weren’t dangerous, merely an inconvenienced peer with common interests. And then convince him that those he cared about weren’t who he thought they were at all…were something else entirely, were made to be taken advantage of, not worth the breath in their lungs. And then the real kicker, have your enemy doubt the truth of it all. Whether you two were even adversaries, whether the people he cared about were real or not, whether he was ever taking anything from anyone, whether he deserved retribution or not. You can’t fix your mistakes if you don’t know you’ve made any, can you. Just stuck in a permanent state of purgatory…left spinning in a loop.”

LAWRENCE: “This is all a little above my head, but, as a fan of platitudes, why not keep things as simple as possible? This is all about whether people have been hurt, and whether you owe them anything, yeah? So why not just tell them point blank what you’ve done and ask them if you owe them anything because of it? Take the guesswork out of it and get down to brass tacks.”

WILLIAM: “And what if I didn’t know what I was really doing when I did it? Who pays the debt, the guy who shot at the target on the barn thinking it was safe to shoot, or the guy forcing people into the barn to line up behind the targets?”

LAWRENCE: “I’d say the latter, but…damn, where do you come up with this shit? Nobody’s that crazy…and hell, you’d think after a while the sound of people screaming and dying would tip the shooter off.”

WILLIAM: “That’s just it, the shooter is expecting the screams, hell, that’s why he’s paying so much to fire at that target, he wants those screams. He wants to feel like he’s killing someone, but not be.”

LAWRENCE: “Well, that’s just all kinds of fucked up. I guess if he’s still thinking no-one is getting hurt he ain’t to blame, but, you gotta ask yourself why the hell is somebody paying good money to feel like he’s killing people. At what point was firing at tin cans and glass bottles not enough? I mean, where does it end, would he next want to shoot at a fresh cadaver dressed up to look like someone he hates, have someone splatter his face with warm pigs blood, have a child act out begging for their parents life…if someone’s looking to blur the lines enough so that he really feels he’s killing someone, what does that say about that person? At the end of the day, would he even care if a real person was standing behind that target, or is he just looking to avoid responsibility for taking a life, and not have to be held to account?”

WILLIAM: “…I think I liked your platitudes more, Lawrence.”

LAWRENCE: “Well, stop asking me questions that are making me look for answers beyond platitudes.”


End file.
